A few days ago I was in the Netherlands, cycling around the Hauge. What a great thing to do! The roads are pristine, not a pot hole in sight. The cycling infrastructure is 'world beating'. We cycled from the busy Europoort, to a small town North East of the Hague on dedicated cycleways. When we had to cross a road with cars we had priority over the traffic. The drivers dutifully slowed and gave way to us without the slightest hassle.
The journey involved a small ferry crossing at Maassluis. The ferry was out of action, and a kindly elderly couple paused their dog walk to explain the situation, and give us directions to an alternate place to cross.
We stayed in a small house boat, and on arriving in our accommodation I input the wifi password into my phone and discovered I had an email. It was "100% honesty for money!" by Johan "Dr Beep" Koelman. Now I don't know Dr Beep personally, but I assume, from the excellent Lost Keys and the wonderful, but all too short The Case of the Broken Timemachine he is based in the Netherlands.
What a coincidence I thought! But also I was quite excited because I am a huge fan of the two titles I mention above. Lost Keys was a game I played on real hardware, and I loved it so much I used it to introduce my wife to the Spectrum. She completed it.
So, how does "100% honesty for money!" stack up against the Dr Beep back catalogue? Is it another Wiwo Dido type classic, or is it at more of the Fun Basic end of the spectrum?
Also, why am I waffling a lot and going off on a tangent as if I am desperately trying to think of something to write?
This is the email I got introducing the game:
here is my entry for the CSSCGC 2023.
No screenshot or any info, just that
this program is
"100% honesty for money!"
Johan "Dr Beep" Koelman
So a man of few words. OK, maybe all of his energy went into coding, and he was too spent to say much about his masterpiece?
The 'game' is for the ZX81. A machine I am not very familiar with. Luckily Inkspector emulator has a ZX81 option, so that is what I used to load "100% honesty for money!".
Upon loading the game I got the following message:
That was it. I couldn't get the game to do anything else. So assuming I was doing something wrong, I wrote to Dr Beep, to ask if I had missed something. A few days later, I am back in England, it is raining outside, and I am sat by my window, watching the potholes fill with water from a blocked gully slowly flooding the road. Then suddenly, I have a reply:
No,
you missed nothing.
Like all the cassette50 games your ar scammed. You bought this game and you got exectly what the name of the program says. You are scammed.
Even by someone who is bad in english, (four, not for) and (buiying) not buying). Even the words are wrongly abbriviated. As it could have been on a cassette50 game.
You owe me 10 bucks for the game ;)
Johan
The game file is called SCAM. So I think, rather than being a game, this is a wider philosophical point about the nature of value. For example, I bought my copy of Cassette50 knowing exactly what it was, so I guess I didn't get scammed. However if I had bought it as a child and paid £14.99 for it, I may have felt differently. In any case, I think I have proven that cassette50 is not necessarily a scam and therefore, the solitary concept of this program is invalid. I am awarding Johan -50million points.
Is this the worst game then? Well it's not a game, so just like a painting of a pipe is not an actual pipe, then this is not a game, even if Johan asserts it is. Yes, that is why the 1929 painting, The Treachery of Images by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte is included above. If you have read this far, I salute you!
FAQs
Should you play this?
No.
Is it crap?
Yes.
Is it a game?
No. (So it cannot win or lose this competition).
Why did you review a submission that was one line of code?
1 SAVE "SCAm"
10 PRINT "THANK YOU FOUR BUIYING THIS PROGRAM."
It was actually two lines - so totally justifiable then!
Has this game put you off the Neverlands?
Not on your nelly!
I feel you are using this review to somehow 'talk England down'. Has J Bizzel's gone woke?
All I'll say is my son calls turnips 'Brexit Tomatoes'
Johan said it took him 4 minutes to code this game, what did he do with the other 3 minutes?
Only Johan and God can know that.
Final remarks
The real scam is the British Government
Scam? Scam.p more like.
Get it here
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